Description
Presentation copy of A Roving Commission: My Early Life, inscribed by Winston Churchill to the son-in-law of President Franklin D. Roosevelt, John R. Boettiger.
Octavo, xi, [2], 377pp. Red cloth, title stamped in gilt. The second printing, without the “Scribner’s A” on the copyright page. Notable rubbing and sunning to the cloth spine, wear at tips of boards. Internally clean, solid text block. Complete with frontispiece portrait, 26 illustrations and a fold-out map of “Mr. Churchill’s Journey” in Africa. In the publisher’s first state dust jacket, $3.50 on the front flap, chip at the head of the spine, sunning to the spine panel, light shelf wear, a very good example of this scarce jacket. Housed in custom black leather clamshell, title in gilt on the spine.
(Woods A37(b)) (Cohen A91.2.b)
Inscribed on the front free endpaper: “To John Boettiger / from / Winston S. Churchill / Chicago 1932.”
The Most Interesting Man in Great Britain visited Chicago in February of 1932, during a lecture tour of the United States and Canada. While in Chicago, Churchill was hosted by the owner of the Chicago Tribue, Col. Robert R. McCormick, and “held court” at the Chicago Tribune offices, where John R. Boettiger was a reporter. A few months after Boettiger’s meeting with Churchill, he was assigned to cover the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, where he likely first encountered Anna Roosevelt, the daughter of the Democratic nominee for president, Gov. Franklin D. Roosevelt. While both were still married, by the end of 1932, it was clear to all that the two were in love and would marry in 1935. (Boettiger, 171)
